BUYER DEMAND: How much market demand is there, who are the buyers and what do they want?
Discussion started by marcscime
I'm trying to understand what this business is really all about. I think the subject line suffices to explain the basic nature of my question and sets up the discussion but please let me know if I need to further explain what I seeking to learn. Maybe we could share and we all could learn.
A little about me: I'm not much for the technical jargon with this stuff but I do have an industrial design, CAD and photography background and I am a perfectionist.
This is a little something I did a few years ago as sample of my work. I did this in Rhino with V-Ray. I'm mostly self taught through experimentation, trial and error and the guidance of tutorials.
Answers
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You know, if you wish to now a buyer, this is kind of eternal question as - to be or not to be. I guess, you can even devote the whole life of yours to understand their needs in order to serve them properly, but it is not that easy as it may seem. I would like to know your point of view - who is a buyer?
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This isn't about existential philosophical questions. I'm not talking about "a buyer" (single) or knowing "a buyer"; I'm inquiring about the commercial market demand (consumers or users) for the products on offer here for free or for purchase. To be honest, I'm a bit skeptical that there is much commercial demand for ready made 3D models of the various objects such as we see on this site.
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Hi Marcscime, thanks for a good question :) As you might know the market leader Turbosquid has around USD 35mn in revenue per year, so a good indication of the overall market for paid models would probably be doubling or tripling that amount. The demand for free models is much, much higher - but obviously hard to quantify in monetary terms.
In our marketplace buyers come from a variety of backgrounds, including architecture, advertising, scientific / medicine fields, gaming, visualization, and more recently 3D printing. The clients tend to be both freelancers and companies on a deadline, looking for something to meet the deadline. If the buyer is a time-sensitive corporate, the most important aspects of a model are whether it suits their need (you won't buy a flower if you need a car), and the quality (so that you do not spend a lot of time on fixing the models). If the buyer is a student buying for own personal project, the most important aspect is of course the price.
Hope this answers your questions at least a bit - let me know if you have any further ones!
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Now we're beginning to get somewhere; thanks, Dalia!
The problem I perceive, right or wrong, from my, albeit limited experience, of buying or borrowing 3D modeled objects to incorporate into projects involving 3D printing is lack of reliability or lack of certainty about whether what you're about to buy is good closed or water-tight geometry that you won't end up spending additional minutes or even hours trying to fix. This is awfully big problem when we're on a deadline! I've been doing this CAD thing for decades, been burned enough times by other people's junk to know that I always far and away prefer to only work with my own files/work.
The other part of the question is knowing what other people may want in the deliverables in terms of workflows, organization or structure because there really aren't any industry standards for this aspect as far as I know.
Although I have many years of experience, I come from a very narrowly focused product design/development world thus have a very narrow or limited point of view or understanding of the 3D modeling realm as a whole. As you say, the buyers come from a variety of backgrounds and needs. A customer who is doing work that results in a 3D printed object probably wouldn't choose a rigged SubD modeled object or file.
For all I know, there may be ten times as much demand for rigged files that are suitable for gaming/advertising/visualization cohort versus files that are formated for the scientific/medical device/3D printing cohort. I wonder what the largest segment of Turbosquid's (or cgtrader's) customers have in common as far what they're looking for in a purchase.
Marc
Hi Marc, apologies for the delay in the answer, I missed your comment here. Let me say this - the gaming / advertising / visualization cohort is a fairly established one and there is a demand that is growing, but at a fairly limited rate. Since it is a mature market, the buyers are much more used to pay for the models if they see that they will be able to save time or to augment their workflow (think a designer needing a standard item such as a car, or a game developer looking to add assets to a game). That is especially true for models from established sellers or where you can see quality from preview images and so on.
Now if you want to jump on a rocketship, it makes sense to try modeling for 3D printing needs. The market there is not yet mature, not everyone is used to paying for quality models and overall average sales price is lower. It is also less clear what to model there. However, it is growing extremely rapidly, and as increasing number of players such as Staples enter the market, you will be able to actually serve not only professional designers, but end consumers - which is a major major market. We'll also be offering a bit more opportunities to sell 3D printable models on CGTrader in near future.
I hope that at least partially answers your questions - please let me know if you have any further ones!
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Hi Dalia, thank you for your professional answer, I really appreciate it. I think about creation of 3d models and I wonder if turbosquid on 1-st place in this business what about other players like the3dstudio, creativecrash, 3dexport (I have seen in Google FlatPiramid also) etc. Any information about them. Will be really interesting how much money they have or which piece of market they got. Looking forward for your reply and thank you again.
Hi Vilen! It is hard to say as we do not know the data of these companies. Based on Alexa rankings we have just risen to the second place after TS in terms of traffic (just above the level of traffic of the3DStudio). Of course these rankings are based on a limited sample at Alexa. They are all older sites than CGTrader, so some of them have more models - for instance the3DStudio has 90,000+ and 3DExport has 50,000+. I do not know the sales data on these sites (maybe someone could share it?), but I think we can fairly say that we are the fastest growing in the market - we increased the number of models from 9000 to 35000 this year, and the sales grew accordingly. So you will not be mistaken to get on board ;)
Also, if you work in very specific area, let's say games - it might make sense to try out Unity3D or other specialized marketplaces.
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